With 70% of people feeling their work culture impacts their company's ability to grow and prosper, it is clear that a sustainable workplace culture matters. In our recent report, we offer practical ways to build a more sustainable workplace culture -- including watching workload, giving praise and opportunities, and empowering decision-making.
The good news: Clockwise is a time orchestration platform that can support you in these sustainability initiatives. Sustainable work cultures are the way of the future, and time orchestration can help. In this post, you'll learn:
- What time orchestration is
- 3 benefits of time orchestration for teamwork
- 3 ways time orchestration directly fosters more sustainable cultures
What is time orchestration?
Merriam-Webster defines orchestration as a harmonious organization, so time orchestration is the harmonious organization of time. But wait, there's more! Time orchestration combines the magic of an automated scheduling assistant with calendar optimization.
Time orchestration platforms like Clockwise help you manage your schedule and optimize your calendar to make space for more uninterrupted blocks of Focus Time. These tools can help you make more time for what's important, regardless of your role or industry. Let's look at three benefits of time orchestration for teams and get into the specifics.
3 benefits of time orchestration for teams
With remote and hybrid work on the rise, many companies are hiring team members across the globe. This is great for expanding inclusive hiring practices. But scheduling meetings across time zones, finding uninterrupted work time, and setting healthy work boundaries can be challenging.
It doesn't have to be this way, and you don't have to sacrifice sacred time together as a team. Time orchestration can help and offers a host of benefits for teams. Here's how it works:
1. Team meeting times that work.
Scheduling a one-on-one meeting from the east to the west coast is tough sometimes, but add in a handful of other team members (in other countries, no less). Before you know it, calendar Tetris wins, and there are no open slots available for the team to meet without asking someone to work late or roll out of bed and log on early. Or at least that's what it looks like. Sound familiar?
Time orchestration won't solve the fact that your incredible team members live across various parts of the world. But the right platform like Clockwise can help you easily schedule meetings with your team. The best part is you won't have to convert time zones or spend a half hour trying to schedule a 15-minute quick sync.
The Clockwise Scheduler suggests meeting times that work well for all attendees -- all while keeping your Focus Time and work preferences in mind.
To add, you can tell Clockwise which of your meetings are flexible (learn more about our finer day-of-week control over flexible meetings) and how much they can move. This reduces the number of Slack messages you might send back and forth coordinating meeting movement. (Don't believe us? Flexible meetings improved Betterment's productivity and collaboration.)
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2. More time for meaningful work.
Time orchestration isn't only about time spent together; it's also about creating enough time for team members to engage in deep work. Having enough time to tackle to-do lists enables teams to provide their full attention to their teammates in meetings. So while on the surface, it might seem like time orchestration only helps automate how we spend our time and when our meetings occur, it creates more time for the entire organization.
Clockwise creates more time for meaningful work by rearranging existing meetings to open long blocks of Focus Time—or uninterrupted work periods. You can tell Clockwise how many hours of Focus Time to save on your calendar per week, and it will adjust your Focus Time as needed around meetings that pop up.
3. Insight into team bandwidth.
Business leaders need an understanding of team bandwidth to combat burnout and effectively create a sustainable work culture. Time orchestration is instrumental in the success of accomplishing both. Leaders and managers can use Clockwise to understand where and how team members spend their time. It helps teams solve blockers such as having too many unnecessary meetings and not enough Focus Time.
The Clockwise Team Analytics feature categorizes time insights into the following buckets: meetings, Focus Time, fragmented time, other, and out of office. This allows for the full picture view of the team, which is tremendously valuable in building cohesive, sustainable teams.
Pro-tip: Incorporate Clockwise into employee onboarding, so they can start taking advantage of it right away.
3 ways time orchestration fosters sustainable work cultures
We surveyed over 1,000 full-time knowledge workers in the US. Unsurprisingly, our findings suggest there's a high ROI of sustainable work culture. Employees believe company culture impacts an organization's ability to grow, ability to innovate, employee engagement, retention, and referrals.
Companies should avoid leaving sustainability up to chance. Instead, as more organizations strive to create sustainable work cultures, time orchestration should be top of mind. Below are the ways in which time orchestration can foster a more sustainable work culture.
1. Protects work-life balance.
Here's the deal: employee engagement and work-life balance go hand-in-hand. When employees feel they have a healthy work-life balance, they are much more likely to engage in work and produce higher-quality results. Employees are inherently better performers when companies support employee well-being and help them manage burnout.
One way to promote work-life balance? By offering flexible and remote working. And time orchestration helps to manage and maintain distributed workforces by making it easier for teams to work together while owning their schedules.
Pro-tip: The secret to getting more done in less time is to use your time better, not push for longer hours and make yourself constantly available to your colleagues.
2. Creates opportunities for team input.
Companies with sustainable work cultures ask employees for their input on a regular basis and include them in decision-making processes when possible. Sometimes that's easier said than done. Kuvio Creative leans on Clockwise to create efficiencies and communication practices that support their company values around team input.
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"The biggest challenge for our team is finding communication and collaboration time while staying true to the ethics that we've outlined with people having a healthy work-life balance of only working within 30-hours per week and staying true to the time that they have allotted.
We're able to have the important conversations, whether it's if we want to take on a new client or where we want to go as a company. Company-wide conversations are simpler to have, and Clockwise makes it so that we can include everyone, which is important to us. Everyone has a voice in our decisions because we can find times that work for everybody."
3. Gives workers more control of their time.
Employees want autonomy at work, including autonomy over their schedules and how they spend their time. While autonomy looks different depending on who you ask (how employees work, where they work, or what their work schedules are), the benefits speak for themselves. The potential benefits of autonomy include greater employee commitment, better performance, improved productivity, and lower turnover.
One way to support more autonomy at work is by helping teams manage their schedules and minimize distractions that get in the way. With a time orchestration tool like Clockwise, team members can identify the amount of Focus Time they need, manage their meetings, and balance their workloads. It offers a level of customization to meet unique workday needs, no matter the employee, team, or industry.
Sustainable work cultures don't happen by chance
If you're looking for ways to make your workplace more sustainable, consider implementing some of the practices we've talked about today. Sustainable work cultures don't happen by chance; they require intentional efforts and practices to support employees. Time orchestration platforms like Clockwise make it easier for teams to schedule meetings without wasting time, open up more time for deep work, and create a more sustainable work culture overall. What changes will you make in your own workplace?
About the author
Alyssa Towns a freelance writer based in Denver, CO. She writes on a productivity and career-related topics for Insider, Clockwise, G2 and other publications.
